


never went in for the afterglow

by rjosettes



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Werewolves, Ambiguous/Open Ending, First Kiss, Implied/Referenced Underage Drinking, M/M, Mistletoe, everyone is bi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-31 20:23:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17856374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rjosettes/pseuds/rjosettes
Summary: Stiles's eyes are still shut tight when he hears Jackson calling for everyone to 'shut the fuck up and disperse'. The whistles and jeers have stopped, at least, and the only person still calling for an encore is Greenberg from his spot halfway up to the second floor – protected from anything Jackson might lob at him by the railing of Lydia's staircase. It's not entirely out of the question, especially not these days. Especially not now.Stiles's first kiss happens under the mistletoe at Lydia Martin's senior holiday party.





	never went in for the afterglow

**Author's Note:**

> Archiving an old holiday exchange fic from a few years ago! All mistakes were copy/pasted, so feel free to let me know about typos/grammar errors in the comments. Hope you enjoy!

Stiles's eyes are still shut tight when he hears Jackson calling for everyone to 'shut the fuck up and disperse'. The whistles and jeers have stopped, at least, and the only person still calling for an encore is Greenberg from his spot halfway up to the second floor – protected from anything Jackson might lob at him by the railing of Lydia's staircase. It's not entirely out of the question, especially not these days. Especially not now.

Breakups make people volatile. Stiles has witnessed it more than once in his perpetually single life, and the fact that Jackson and Lydia were the two halves of one supercouple on the level of Brangelina has made it all the more dramatic. They can't stop showing up at each other's parties; if Lydia misses even one lacrosse game when the season comes, all hell might break loose. For weeks now, Stiles has caught himself once or twice a day checking his mental map of the school for the routes that take him as far from Jackson's locker as he can get without making himself late. Whatever actually happened between the two of them has turned him into even more of a ticking time bomb than he was before.

Lydia, of course, has come out of the whole thing smelling like roses. The tidy finality of severing their relationship on Facebook happened before Stiles had even had a chance to find out from Allison, and at the fall fest barely six weeks later she'd shown up with a date. Now, four days before Christmas as of a few moments ago, she and Danielle are going strong thanks to Lydia's barely-there class load and desire to be very far from Beacon Hills High whenever she can manage. There have been a few drive-by snipes, of course, but nothing out of the ordinary and nothing Stiles hasn't probably deserved. She just doesn't care enough to entirely bite his head off, and she won't satisfy Jackson by reacting to him that way. It'd be kind of a fascinating tug of war if he weren't so personally invested in it.

“Get the fuck out,” Jackson grouses, louder this time, and Stiles stumbles back into the doorframe before he realizes it's presumably not aimed at him, but the underclassmen loitering in the kitchen. Why he should be surprised either way beats him. More than a decade of being a jerk is enough to predict a pattern, no matter who he might have just kissed with his very, very soft lips. Disturbingly soft. Stiles isn't drunk but his face kind of tingles a little.

The kids file out through the tiny space between them, giggling and pecking each other on the cheek as they pass through the mistletoe. The question 'why didn't we think of that' his hovering on his lips when Lydia appears from some kind of pocket dimension under the stairs or something, tiny and looking more than a little like the mother of a particularly hellacious toddler. She raises an eyebrow at him before she digs her short, opalescent nails into Jackson's elbow and drags him further into the kitchen. The mistletoe falls when the door slams in Stiles's face. A quick sweep of the area tells him there's no one to call him out, so he stuffs it into his jacket pocket and makes a quick retreat out the back door.

California may not be having a white Christmas, but it's definitely too cold to be swimming. Inexplicably, everyone clumps around the pool anyway, arms wrapped around their elbows to stop themselves shivering. No skin off Stiles's nose, but he nabs a glass of eggnog from the table because Scott's nowhere to be found and he needs to put some kind of barrier between himself and everyone who just watched him kiss Jackson Whittemore. He's not exactly upset to have finally shut down his possible Never Been Kissed-themed future, but his friend is probably upstairs somewhere being a _good listener_. Unavailable to listen to the many and varied noises Stiles is prepared to make at him, such as: terrified squawks, confused whimpers, and the occasional frustrated, disbelieving scoff. There's almost something wrong about Scott missing his very public first kiss, considering Stiles had witnessed his in the very dark, very empty locker room in sophomore year. 

He'd leave, really, but first of all he's Scott's ride – no way is he catching a ride home with Derek, even if his sister's car is flashy and Derek is....how did Scott put it? 'Actually kind of interesting.' Secondly, on paper, his only reason for being at this party is to add a few more notes and checks to the 15 Year Plan. It didn't see a lot of action for a while in there, beyond the occasional lost hour on a Saturday night spent being pissed off at the page that the ragged composition book naturally falls open to. Between his grade school hand-drawn future family portraits and his whited-out, frankly disturbing freshman year fantasies is the center of nearly half a decade of rage: Jackson's name, written so large in his seventh grade fury that he'd had to squeeze the N into the corner of the page. 

Between then and now, the two of them have split so many times that he'd had to give himself a ground rule. Every time the news filtered through the hallways, a countdown started on Stiles's otherwise poorly-kept wall calendar. He'd decided a month was enough time to declare them officially done. More than once he'd excitedly crossed off the squares in the home stretch just for them to kiss and make up on day thirty, holding hands at the cool table in the cafeteria, which smelled just as much like lemon Pledge as all of the others. By the time they'd made it past the full thirty-one this time, crossing out Jackson's name just felt...empty. Mostly pointless.

Most of the stuff in his plan is crossed out. The feasible stuff, that is. There's a lot of things in there that are framed for the scenario where he's already actually talked her into dating him. It hadn't always seemed so hypothetical. Now he's just rehashing the same old tactics that were meant to get him to that point – complimenting her, finding reasons to start up a conversation. Straight through last year, he'd offered to stay late and help clean up with her. Being useful seemed like a good quality in a boyfriend. Jackson had money, social rank, and unthinkable amounts of experience pleasing Lydia in bed, but, y'know. Stiles had a little bit more arm length to put things up into the top cabinets, and he wouldn't complain about doing jobs that probably get left to a maid in the Whittemore house. 

He's ready and willing to pull the same old shit tonight out of habit when Lydia marches brusquely through the back door with a fresh tray of bright red punch in festive snowflake cups and a few more glasses of eggnog. In his single moment of hesitation – she still looks kind of pissed and more than a little like she'd rather down a few drinks than come out to mingle with her guests – she glances up at him, piercing gaze that pulls him apart like an equation she can manipulate. “Stiles,” she says, voice flat, but then she's flashing him a smile with her mulberry-colored lips. “Scott's looking for you inside. I think he's in the dining room.”

Luckily, he knows where that is, and both paths through the house to get there. Unluckily, the door leading off the main hall directly into it is shut and locked. “Fuck,” he mutters to himself, backtracking toward the kitchen, where someone's replaced the mistletoe over the door already. Maybe Boyd's milling around here somewhere, or that laughably giant kid from the prep school that keeps trying to cream them at lacrosse. He checks to make sure the immediate vicinity of the doorway is empty before he goes through – he's not getting caught out twice tonight, and there's no telling who he'd end up locking lips with this time around. 

The door that opens up to the Martin family's rooms for entertaining is closed, but when he tests the handle it gives, not a single creak as he presses it open. “Scott?”

“McCall's not here,” a wet, soft voice tells him. Stiles is ready to back out and leave whatever emotional drunk has found their way here alone, but he spots that unmistakeable obnoxious Christmas polo deeper in – the sitting room, he guesses. He doesn't know how rich people work. “Probably upstairs with his boyfriend.”

“Derek's not his boyfriend.” He takes a step by reflex; he's always been bad at talking to someone that he can't really look at. 

Jackson snorts, but it's just as distorted as his voice, soggy from something other than booze. For once, Jackson's not falling down drunk or, seemingly, even halfway to it. “But you knew who I meant, didn't you?”

Rolling his eyes, Stiles takes another half-dozen steps toward that horrendous green shirt and Jackson's voice. It's the first time he's actually seen the sitting room. He's a little surprised there's not plastic on the furniture like at Babci Stilinski's house, but presumably Lydia had been prim enough even as a child not to mess up the upholstery. “Yeah, and if you said it to anyone else, they'd probably think you were talking about me. Not really a great gotcha if it only works on one person, dude.”

He watches the ugly polo wrinkle as Jackson's shoulders hunch. The closer he gets, the smaller Jackson looks, which is...well, actually pretty par for the course since he's definitely shorter than Stiles. Still, it looks like he's doing it on purpose while alone on a couch, which is decidedly not the norm. Every second of life with Jackson has been littered with peacocking and having to pretend he doesn't care what anyone thinks. He's gotten pretty good at that. The pretending, that is. 

“If you're looking for a good gotcha, try the redhead.”

“Oh my god.” When he gets to the couch, Jackson's not, like. Crying. Not really. But his stupid perfect face is blotchy and he looks somewhere between embarrassed and about to throw up. “Are you literally in here pining over Lydia? In her house?” The look he gets back is a direct challenge, and his tongue almost sticks before he clenches his fists and pushes past it. “No, nuh-uh, don't look at me like that. I came here for eggnog. Look at this face.” He manages not to poke himself in the eye. “I'm not crying. So what, I liked her, that is nothing on bawling your eyes out in the important guests room.”

Jackson squints at him, jaw jutting under the force of his consideration, and it gets even more obvious that his eyes really are wet, even if he didn't shed any tears. “Yeah, okay, Stiles. Like anyone would believe you.”

“Lydia would.”

A single, hiccuping laugh, nothing like Stiles has every heard out of him before. “Lydia was just here, dumbass. You watched her come in here with me.”

Stiles can't argue that. Something doesn't sit right about it, though. Leaves him unsettled. “Whatever. I was just looking for Scott. I could find you some tissues before I go, if you want, but I've got shit to do.”

“Like tell your only friend that a real live boy finally took one for the team?”

It's stomach-turning, the things that Jackson can do to him. It's been like this for years and the only thing that's kept him from having a public meltdown is the fact that he can have them in private if he just gives that good old wacky retort and blows it off. Everyone knows how mean Jackson is; his friends talk about it more than anyone else, if Danny's any measure of them. After all this time no one's ever really tried to step up to him – to give back as good as they get instead of coming to a draw, pretending that they don't care. Hell, Stiles has punched him directly in the face before and it still didn't feel like winning, even when his knuckles bruised and ached for a few days after from glancing off that damned cheekbone. He's kissed him right on the mouth and felt something ugly and worryingly like hope twist in his chest. There's no winning with him, and Stiles is just...he's sick of losing. 

“Yeah, Jackson.” He hopes he sounds as tired as he is. “That's exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to collect my best friend so I can drive him home and tell him how for the rest of my life, I get to remember that my first kiss was _under a plant_ with you. That's exactly how I pictured this night going, couldn't have made it more perfect for me. Merry Christmas.”

“Your first kiss?”

Shit. He knew better than that. “Yep. That was my dramatic exit, though, man, so I'll just-”

“You're kidding me. You're a senior.”

“For a while there, I thought I was going to be a senior citizen. But you sure handled that, didn't you?” He tries to crack a smile, settles for whatever his face decides to do instead and makes finger guns in Jackson's general direction. 

There's no response for a good fifteen seconds, during which Stiles tells himself he should just go about eight times. He has no good excuse for staying other than that he wants to know what Jackson can possibly say to that. If there's a thing in the world that could come out of his mouth that could somehow change how he walks away from this, and how he walks back into school in the new year.

“Sorry,” is about the last thing he expects to hear.

“Excuse me, what?”

“I said, I'm sorry. That's shitty; I just figured you and Scott....”

Stiles chokes a little on what should be a laugh because come on, how many times has he heard that before? “Nah. I mean, that's. Thanks, I guess. But no. I was waiting for someone, and then I was just. Waiting.”

“Nobody's ever done waiting for Lydia,” Jackson says, and it's not some flippant quote he's had prepared since the breakup, some allusion to her flawless hair and makeup routine or shopping habits. He means it in a way that must hurt him to say, and that's. It makes it sound like Jackson hurting is less of a novelty than he'd thought. “Maybe you, though. You did say you _liked_ her.”

“Did I say that? Is that what I said? What I meant was-”

“I don't give a shit.” He stretches out the collar of his shirt – god forbid – and wipes at his face like there's something there to get. Stiles is surprised his skin doesn't come right off in thin layers piled on top of one another to make something stronger. “Stick with the past tense. Lydia can't stand herself when she's making other people happy. That's why she's a ray of goddamn sunshine now.”

The couch is six feet long, at least. Stiles stares at the ornately carved foot at the far end for a while before he just...sits. He should leave Scott alone upstairs where he might actually be getting somewhere with someone he's into for the first time since Allison. They'll make this the left in the lurch by Lydia pity party for two – Lydia's Lurch wouldn't be a half bad band name, but he doesn't play any instruments and he won't remember it in the morning. “At least, uh. I mean, the Danielle thing seems to be working out for her. My bad, by the way. She met Heather and one thing led to another, and...”

“Six degrees of my girlfriend's a lesbian.”

“Bisexual, actually. Pretty common thing, really, and then there's demisexual, which is this whole other thing that Scott's been telling me about, and pansexual, and...” He trails off, because Jackson isn't looking at him. Just kind of smirking at the floor. It's a very clear Whittemore warning sign, the kind of thing he's taught himself to avoid or brace for. “You didn't make her gay, is what I mean. She probably totally still likes dudes, and even if she didn't...”

Jackson's still grinning, his laugh nothing but air through his open smile as he shakes his head. “Yeah, I get how it works, Stilinski. I'm the only one in this room who actually knows anything about sex in the first place.”

“Shut up,” Stiles complains reflexively. “Are you gonna coast on that your entire life? 'Look at me, I slept with Lydia.'”

“You think Lydia's the only person I ever slept with?”

His best impression of a goldfish lasts a shockingly long time while he processes that. “No way, Lydia would've rained hell on any other girl you had sex with, even if you were broken up.”

“Probably,” Jackson agrees, considering. 

Stiles is on his feet again and halfway to the door because that's it, that's enough private time for the boys upstairs. “I can't deal with this,” he says, feeling honest for the first time tonight since he told Scott he didn't really want to come to this party, after all. “Goodnight, Jackson.”

He doesn't say a word to Scott on the drive home. Not about the kiss, the conversation. Not about the fact that Lydia lied to his face to send him into that room with her ex. Least of all about Jackson's apology or intentionally ambiguous bullshit. It's probably just another wall he stacked up as quickly as he could to counteract the two seconds he'd seemed like more than the stock douchebag character from an eighties film. 

It's not until he's getting ready for bed that the mistletoe spills out of his pocket and onto his bedroom floor. Lying there like a dare, like a decision. His hand hesitates at just the right height to arc it across the room into his trash can – two points. Instead, he shoves it in his bedside table with the other crap he never finds the time to clean out. 

Some stuff you just have to sit on for a while.


End file.
